Measurement in Medicine: A Practical Guide (Practical Guides to Biostatistics and Epidemiology)

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2 Introduction
researchers who take the time and make the effort to develop an instrument
that meets their specific needs.
Finally, evaluation of the quality of measurements is a core element of
various scientific disciplines, such as psychometrics, epidemiology and biostatistics. Although methodology and terminology vary from discipline to
discipline, their main objective is to assess and improve measurements. The
fourth reason for this book is therefore to integrate knowledge from different disciplines, in order to provide researchers and clinicians with the
best methods and ways to assess, appraise, and improve the methodological
quality of their measurements.
1.2 Clinimetrics versus psychometrics
Psychometrics is a methodological discipline with its roots in psychological
research. Within the field of psychometrics, various measurement theories
have been generated, such as classical test theory and item response theory
(Lord and Novick, 1968; Nunnally, 1978; Embretson and Reise, 2000). These
theories will be further explained in Chapter 2. Cronbach and Spearman
were two famous psychometricians. Psychometric methods are increasingly
applied to other fields as well such as medicine and health.
The term ‘clinimetrics’ is indissolubly connected to Feinstein, who
defined it as ‘measurement of clinical phenomena’. He focused on the construction of clinical indexes, and promoted the use of clinical expertise,
rather than statistical techniques, to develop measurement instruments
(Feinstein, 1987).
However, in this book we avoid using the terms psychometrics and clinimetrics. Our basic viewpoint is that measurements in medicine should be
performed using the most adequate methods. We do not label any of these as
psychometric or clinimetric methods, but we do indicate which underlying
theories, models and methods are applied.
1.3 Terminology and definitions
Literature on measurement can be confusing because of wide variation in
names given to specific measurement properties and how they are defined.
Often, many synonyms are used to identify the same measurement property.

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